Mark of Moray
by coonskin
Summary: Alternate ending story exploring something I've always wondered since first seeing the episode Mark of the Saurian. Why didn't the Saurians just try to kill Buck? I don't buy the brief explanation given in the episode; Buck's illness would have been the perfect cover for them.
1. Chapter 1

Dr. Moray studied the sleeping man before him. He withdrew the prepared needle from inside his dress jacket. "Now, Captain Rogers," he said softly, "I'm going to give you a shot. All of your systems will shut down over the next hours from this poison, which should be put down to a worsening of your very convenient illness. I'm very sorry that it has come to this, but it can't be helped. You cannot be allowed to interfere with our plan. I'm afraid the drug will cause you significant pain as it enters your body, but the discomfort will be brief. Before tomorrow, you will be dead." He plunged the needle home.

BRBR

Wilma entered sick bay and stopped just inside the door, staring. Buck was on the floor with Paulton and Dr. Goodfellow on either side of him. Dr. Moray, both hands rubbing his throat, was slowly retreating along the wall to her right. "What's going on here?" she demanded.

Paulton went for practicality instead of explanations. "Help us get him back into bed," she urged.

Wilma hurried forward as Dr. Goodfellow repeated the request. She seized Buck under his left arm, and with Paulton on the right, they managed to pick him up and heave him back onto the bed. Buck was barely able to help at all, and his skin felt even hotter than it had before. Wilma picked up his legs and moved them onto the bed, and he tried weakly to position himself as Paulton began to reattach the IV.

The sheet was untangled and pulled up, and Wilma tucked it in over him. His head turned restlessly on the pillow, and his eyes opened. She had never seen them look like this, even in his hallucinations earlier. They were glazed, unfocused, fever bright, but now with an accusation mixed with horror in them. "Dr. Goodfellow," he managed. "You drugged me. Are you one of them?"

Goodfellow was stunned himself by the accusation and was silent. Buck's restless eyes found Wilma next. "Wilma," he said softly. "You, too? Is there anybody?"

She patted his chest, trying to soothe him. There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She would have given anything to help him, but it was beyond her power. "He stabbed me," Buck said, so softly that she almost couldn't make out the words. "Something's wrong." In the next moment, Buck seized her shoulders with a fierce, desperate strength. "Hawk," he said. "Get me Hawk."

Wilma, thoroughly frightened now, simply nodded. That demand took the last of his strength, and Buck's fingers went slack as his head turned back away from her. He had passed out, she realized. She turned to look at Dr. Goodfellow, seeking reassurance.

The doctor stepped forward, studying the monitors, then looked at Moray, who had retreated almost to the door by now. "Are you all right, Doctor?" he asked.

Moray nodded. He looked shaken up himself. "He tried to kill me," he said. "He was really trying to kill me. His delirium is getting worse."

"Yes. I assure you, he didn't mean it," Goodfellow said. "This virus is to blame. He's actually a very good-natured man."

At that moment, an alarm went off on the monitors simultaneously with Paulton's voice. "Doctor." Goodfellow turned back to Buck, and Wilma heard the door swish behind them as Moray left.

"His heart beat is suddenly getting a little more irregular," Paulton stated.

Goodfellow studied the flashing instruments. "Yes, it is," he mused. "That's odd. The records on Cygnus fever are a few hundred years old and probably just a summary at this point, but none of them mentioned that as a symptom." He put the puzzle aside for the moment. "I'll get him something to stabilize it." He headed for his lab, and Wilma moved up closer to Buck. He was sweating, and even aside from the unconsciousness, he looked somehow worse than before to her.

"He said Moray stabbed him," she recalled.

Paulton shook her head. "He also said that Dr. Goodfellow was 'one of them.' Dr. Moray was going to get a blood sample from him to try to help us; he said he'd seen a similar case once. Captain Rogers must have reacted to the needle. That's odd, though; he really was sedated. I don't know how he managed to find the strength to attack Moray. He really was trying to kill him when we came in; both of us couldn't drag him off. Then all at once, he collapsed."

 _When we came in._ "You two weren't here when Moray was getting the blood sample?" Wilma asked.

"No. Moray wanted a hemofractionizer, and Dr. Goodfellow went to find one. I met him in medical supply."

So Moray had been alone with Buck, Wilma realized. Had maybe even designed it that way.

She didn't like the ambassador and his assistant. That impression had been growing for quite a while, strengthened but not entirely started by their obvious magnanimity toward Buck at the scene back in the hallway. It was that that had led her to pull her hand away from the ambassador. She had nothing concrete to base the feeling on, but she simply didn't _like_ them.

Picking up Buck's left arm, she looked for and found the trickle of blood at his elbow. Moray had indeed stabbed him with a needle.

Dr. Goodfellow returned at that moment with a shot himself for Buck, and Wilma moved away slightly to give him access. He studied Buck after delivering the medication. "Oxygen level just went down a few points, too," Paulton said.

Goodfellow shook his head. "Strange. I know our records aren't complete this much later on this virus, but that wasn't mentioned, either."

Wilma seized a guess. If she was wrong, all that would happen is that she would look foolish in front of these two, but it wouldn't go any further. "Dr. Goodfellow, can you humor me with something? Take a blood sample from him right now and run it for toxins. I think he might have been _given_ a drug a few minutes ago, not just had blood taken."

Goodfellow looked at her in surprise, as did Paulton. "You think Dr. Moray . . ."

"It's a wild guess. I might be totally wrong. But he _was_ with Buck alone. I've never known Buck to attack anybody unprovoked. And it's odd that he's developing new symptoms right after Moray left." She turned to Paulton. "You're a woman. Do you completely trust that man?"

Paulton considered, sorting through the layers. "He is a little polished," she admitted. She countered immediately. "But that doesn't mean . . ."

"Just take the sample, run the tests," Wilma urged. "If I'm wrong, no harm done."

Dr. Goodfellow finally shrugged and nodded, and Paulton retrieved a needle. Wilma watched as the medical assistant stuck it into Buck's arm, withdrawing a sample of blood. Buck shifted restlessly, his eyes opening for just a second, finding Paulton, then falling shut again, but he definitely didn't attack anyone. Paulton handed the syringe to Dr. Goodfellow, and the two of them headed for the lab.

Wilma ran a hand across Buck's forehead. His fever definitely was even higher than before, but he was also shifting slightly, restless even in sleep. He looked in pain at the moment, not just sick. "Buck," she asked him softly, "what is going on here?"


	2. Chapter 2

Wilma stood there for a few minutes looking at Buck, and then she reluctantly turned away and crossed the room to the small equipment bin in the wall next to the door. She glanced back, hating turning her back on him even for a second. Her code opened the bin, and she took out a handheld subspace communicator. Hawk. She had promised him that she would get Hawk. She keyed in the code for his ship.

"Red Boy One, Red Boy One. Do you read me? Over."

Hawk replied promptly. "This is Red Boy One. What is it, Wilma?"

"Buck is worse, and I...I'm really worried." She returned to Buck's bedside. He didn't look any more comfortable than he had a minute ago. "He's asking for you, Hawk. Can you come back?"

"I will return at once. Red Boy One, out." Hawk signed off, and Wilma put a hand on Buck's shoulder.

"Hawk is coming, Buck," she told him softly. "He'll be here soon."

She returned the communicator to the bin, then hit the panel for simple intraship communication, calling the bridge. "Admiral," she said, "Buck is worse. I'd really like to stay with him for the moment if that's all right."

Asimov looked concerned himself. "That's fine, Colonel. I understand. We don't really have much officially going on until we arrive to deliver the ambassador and his party."

"Thank you, sir." She switched the channel off, glad for the official permission. She didn't want to leave him right now, not until her suspicions were resolved either way. If Moray had actually attacked Buck, instead of the other way around...

But _why_? Buck certainly seemed to like the diplomatic party even less than Wilma did, to put it mildly, but he was sick. Everyone knew that, Cabot and Moray included. They had been so understanding, even if they subtly annoyed her with their attitude somehow. Why would Moray really try to hurt him? Assuming that he had.

Until she knew, she didn't want Buck left alone. He was too helpless at the moment.

The door from the lab opened, startling her out of thought, and Goodfellow and Paulton surged back through. Dr. Goodfellow had a syringe in his hand, and he gave Buck a shot before he even spoke to Wilma. "How long has it been since you arrived?" he asked her then. "Thirty minutes or so?"

"About that. Did the blood test turn up something?"

"Yes, indeed it did." The doctor turned to face her. "You might have saved his life, Colonel. At least, I hope so."

"What was he given?" she demanded.

"A very nasty poison. I've just countered with the antidote, and I hope it was in time. The rest is up to him now."

Wilma was shocked. She had had suspicions, but the hard reality was much more difficult to wrap her head around. "Why would Moray try to kill him?"

"Now, we cannot guarantee that it _was_ Moray," Goodfellow replied.

Wilma shook her head. "It was Moray. Buck was simply defending himself earlier."

"I tend to agree with you; I'm just trying to look at this from a question of proof. Buck had been in here alone for about half an hour before Moray asked me for the blood sample and we came in. Technically, we cannot guarantee that no one else entered the room during that time."

"Nobody on this ship would ever try to hurt him," Wilma stated. "It had to be someone from the ambassador's party, and Moray is the doctor. And he was here."

"Again, I agree with you, my dear. But we need more information here before we go throwing around accusations. If we challenged them right now, they'd just say the same thing I did."

Paulton still looked shocked, the first time Wilma had ever seen her really rattled. "Ambassador Cabot has a distinguished record for nearly a decade, and Dr. Moray has worked with him that long, too. What would Moray possibly gain from this?"

Wilma watched Buck. "He looks so uncomfortable right now. Is that part of the effect of the poison?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it's quite painful."

"Can't you give him something for the pain?"

Goodfellow gave Buck's shoulder a pat. "I don't mean to sound unfeeling, Colonel, but we need him to keep fighting for us. He's very far from being out of danger yet. The pain gives him something to keep resisting, and at the moment, that isn't a bad thing."

"Won't the antidote work?" Wilma asked.

"It's supposed to be given within ten minutes," Paulton said. "We were well over that."

"I'm just hoping that the fact that his body chemistry is slightly different will help us here," the doctor said. "The drug might not react entirely the same way with him as it would with one of us. Also, there is the point that he is rather stubborn, if I might say so. He won't give up easily."

Wilma had to smile, even through the worry. "Rather stubborn," she repeated. "He is that." She watched him lying there, and she felt the anger against Moray rising. Cabot, too; she had no doubt that the ambassador himself was in on this plot. Regardless of official proof, she had already mentally convicted both of them.

But why? What could they possibly gain from it?

"I'm staying here," she stated. "I don't want him left alone, not even for a minute. Not until we get to the bottom of this."

"Of course," Paulton said, and there was anger shielded beneath her tone. Someone had attacked her patient, and she took that personally. She also, like the rest of the crew, was fond of Buck, Wilma knew, even if she would have denied that pointedly.

The three of them stood there, watching Buck struggle against the poison, waiting and thinking.


	3. Chapter 3

The three retreated to the far end of the room, by the door, and spoke softly, trying not to disturb Buck. He needed as much rest as he could get, though what he was locked into now hardly looked like resting. There they tried their best to make sense of things.

"Why?" Paulton asked. "I still can't comprehend this. Why try to kill Captain Rogers?"

"He's drawing attention to them," Wilma suggested. "But I don't know why that would bother them. Everybody knows that Buck is sick and would put it down to that."

"He's been a lot worse in this last day," Goodfellow said. "Even before Moray gave him the poison, I mean. He'd definitely been quite ill, but he hadn't really been a problem to handle until the last day."

Paulton snorted. "He's been a problem to handle for longer than that."

Wilma had to grin. "No, he was just being _Buck_. He's not the best patient in the galaxy."

Paulton rolled her eyes. "Understatement of the year, Colonel."

"The escalation really does seem to coincide with the ambassador's party coming aboard," Goodfellow said. "What's the first odd thing you noticed?"

"He wanted me to adjust the picture on the monitor," Paulton said. "He was complaining that there was a green fuzziness around some of the people. But the picture was perfectly fine."

"That's when he went up to the observation deck to watch the ambassador's party coming aboard, and I found him there," Wilma said. "He was talking about a green aura then, too."

"And when I woke him up to introduce him to Dr. Moray," the doctor put in. "Green lights. That's what he's kept saying all along. Green lights. Except for that one moment when he thought he saw something else, and even he admitted that was just momentarily and then went away. That much really could have been a hallucination; his fever is certainly high enough. But the part about some sort of light has been fairly consistent and always associated with the ambassador's party somehow. What could he possibly mean by that? And why would his saying that be perceived as a threat to them?"

"Green lights," Wilma repeated. "I wish we could see what he was seeing somehow. It might help to sort this out."

"Well, there is the OEI," Dr. Goodfellow stated.

"Would an OEI differentiate between a hallucination and reality?" Paulton asked.

Goodfellow looked interested in spite of the seriousness of the current moment. "That's a fascinating question. As far as I know, that has never been tested. I don't see any reason why it _wouldn't_ show a hallucination; it's pulling images and memories straight from the subject's brain. But whichever way, it would let us see what he was seeing during the last day. That data might help us. He's hardly been at his best to give us a thorough description, and none of us realized it might be relevant." He looked over at Buck. "However, before we ever tried that, we would have to have him awake and alert enough to cooperate with the test. It does take concentration."

It also took consent, Wilma knew. At least, for them, it did. No one here was going to try to plug straight into Buck's mind without his approval, and right now, he wasn't capable of giving it. Even if he could, he also needed to be putting all energy currently toward survival, not testing. She walked back over to the bedside and put a hand on his shoulder. He still felt blazing hot, and she could hear his labored breathing. She wondered what fevered, poisoned dreams he might be having at the moment, and she shuddered at the imagining. Her hand tightened up on his shoulder as if daring illness, attack, and anything else to try to pull him away from them.

Buck jumped at her harder grip, and his eyes abruptly snapped open. If they had looked bad before, they looked horrible now, pools of pain and struggle and anticipating more, wildly searching the room. With an effort, he focused, and then, seeing Wilma standing there, he relaxed and let his eyes fall shut again. Whatever threat he had feared, she wasn't it. His response made her feel a little better, though she still wished she had made more of an effort to listen to him the last day.

What was it he had been afraid he would see? He had unquestionably been attacked once already. Was he keeping himself on guard even through the illness and poison for a repeat? Well, they had given him no reason to expect support or protection against Moray from any of them. She squeezed his shoulder again. It took some effort to get a response. "Buck. Buck!" He dragged his eyes back half open finally. "It's going to be all right, Buck," she told him, wishing she could be sure of that. "And we aren't going to leave you alone again. I believe you, Buck." The edges of his mouth twitched just slightly in a weak smile, and then his eyes fell shut again.

"That's not a bad idea, my dear," Dr. Goodfellow said, joining her. He raised his voice a little. "Yes, Buck, we're with you, my boy. And we're so sorry we didn't listen to you more."

At that moment, the door to sick bay slid open, and Paulton, Goodfellow, and Wilma all three turned. It was Dr. Moray.

Wilma, with one of the greatest efforts of her life, stuffed down the accusation and hatred. Dr. Goodfellow was right; they had to have more data before making charges that would stick, and they also needed to know how Cabot was involved.

Moray stepped forward with all the smooth polish that she had instinctively distrusted. "I thought I'd come back by to see how Captain Rogers is doing." He stepped up to Buck's bedside. Wilma didn't yield an inch, keeping him at least a foot away from Buck.

A foot away was enough for a clear assessment. Moray looked concerned. "I must say, he seems worse than he did before."

"Yes, he is," Dr. Goodfellow confirmed. "We're still trying everything, of course, but he has definitely lost ground in the last hour or two. Have your blood tests turned up anything, doctor?"

"Not yet, but the computer is still running them, comparing to some data I have from other worlds." Moray studied Buck closely. "I hope it won't come to that, but Cygnus fever did kill many of its victims, according to the records."

"The old and young especially," Goodfellow said. "I'm hoping Buck can fight it off, being in his prime for all intents and purposes."

"Ah, but you told me he was frozen for 500 years after an accident. It could be that that experience weakened his tissues somewhat and made him more fragile. Hard to predict really how he would react to a virus, even compared to other victims." Moray turned away. "Well, I'll go back to my tests. I'll let you know as soon as I turn up anything definite." He exited.

Paulton, silent throughout that exchange, let out a sharp breath. "Guilty," she said firmly.

"Yes," Wilma agreed. "I wanted to slap him." No, she had actually wanted to give Moray a syringe full of the same poison he had injected into Buck and then stand there and watch _him_ going through the drug's painful course. She would have appreciated every groan and grimace of it.

Speaking of which, while he hadn't woken up again, Buck had become a little more restless while Moray was in the room and speaking. Wilma put a hand on his arm again. "He's gone now, Buck," she told him. "He's not going to get another chance at you. I promise."

Dr. Goodfellow studied the monitors. "His heart beat is more unstable again. I'll get him another dose on the antiarrhythmic." He went back into the lab, and Wilma and Paulton looked at each other. After a moment, Wilma retreated to the door again, jerking her head, and Paulton followed her.

"What do you think of Ambassador Cabot?" she asked very softly. "Does he feel a little wrong to you like Moray does?"

"I've barely seen him," Paulton admitted. "Just for a minute in the hallway, and I was more concerned with trying to keep Captain Rogers from totally collapsing right then."

"You didn't hear . . . no, you wouldn't have heard him when the Admiral apologized. You and Devlin had just left with Buck. But Cabot was so understanding and gracious and magnanimous. It just left a bad taste in my mouth somehow. I think whatever's going on, he's tied up in it, too."

Dr. Goodfellow reentered and gave Buck another dose, then joined them. "He's putting up a good fight," he noted.

"Hopefully, Moray is convinced that he's dying after that visit, so he'll leave him alone. Buck does look awful. At least we have a few days of straight running on the ship with not much going on, like the Admiral said, to try to work this out. Whatever plan they have, assuming they have a plan for some crazy reason, is probably related to something that will happen after they get back to the Directorate. They don't seem to want special attention on the Searcher during the journey there. Stopping attention is the only possible reason I can think of for attacking Buck." She looked back over at Buck. "Fragile. Moray actually called him fragile. Even when he was just setting up an excuse, I wanted to shake him for that. He has no idea how tough Buck is."

"No, he doesn't," Dr. Goodfellow agreed.

"I remember reading up on Cabot at one point last week," Paulton said. "It was right during the peace talks and before things got so busy down here when Captain Rogers returned from Cygnus with the start of this virus. Cabot has an exceptional record of service. This just doesn't make sense."

"Nothing makes sense, but something is going on, even so," Wilma insisted, and the other two nodded. Neither of them was questioning that by now. They continued worrying at the subject for a while, discussing it softly, and all at once, silence pressed in on Wilma. She turned to look back at the bed, and then she filled in the gap her subconscious had noticed. She couldn't hear him breathing anymore. His breathing the last few hours had been harsh, rapid, fighting, easily audible in the room. Now, there was silence. The visible struggle had ended, too. He lay there motionless in the bed, eyes closed.

"Buck?" She surged over to the bed and put a hand on his chest. For one eternal moment, she thought it was still, and then she felt it rise beneath her hand and then fall again.

He was still breathing. He just wasn't fighting to.

Dr. Goodfellow and Paulton were right behind her, and she backed off a bit, letting them examine him. When Goodfellow turned back to her, he was smiling. "He seems to be asleep, actually deeply asleep now. His vital signs all look more stable, and his fever is even down a few scales. I think he's fought it off."


	4. Chapter 4

A little later, they retreated into the adjoining lab, the doctor and Paulton doing computer research on the ambassador and his party, including the aides, and Wilma standing post at the window, still alert. She could be in that room in a flash before anyone made it clear to the bed.

She had balked at the retreat, but Goodfellow insisted. "We'll keep a very close eye on him," he said. "But I don't want us to wake him up, my dear, not until he does on his own. The quieter it is in that room, the better. We need to keep trying to work out what's going on here, and he needs the rest he's finally getting. Best thing in the world for him right now. It will help him get well. With everything he's been through in the last day, he has to be worn out."

That much was true. She had replayed the last day several times mentally already. Not only had Buck legitimately been ill to begin with, but then he had somehow fallen into discovery of something going on with the ambassador and his party. (Green lights. What on earth were the green lights about?) Since then, he had progressively been trying to work the mystery out himself and also to warn his friends, and all of them had made it clear they didn't believe him. Then on top of that, he had been poisoned and had come very close to dying. He was safe now, at least, and sleeping deeply, apparently finally even beyond restless dreams. Wilma stood guard at the window, and every half hour or so, she entered just to make sure he was still breathing, not completely trusting the report of the instruments. He was, easily now, and his fever, while still present, was far lower.

"Absolutely nothing," Paulton said behind her. "There is nothing in their service records to indicate that _any_ of these five people have ever had the slightest suspicion pointed at them of being a double agent. Cabot has solved many other diplomatic hassles besides just negotiating with the Saurians. Nothing but praise for him over the last decade. Moray seems a little more in the background, an advisor, but he and Cabot are a long-term team, and I can't find a whisper of any accusation against him, either. Moray's father served the Defense Directorate for decades; there's a very impressive family history."

Goodfellow shook his head. "It does seem totally out of character for any of them. Perhaps _Moray_ is ill somehow and his actions are being affected. Could Buck be picking up on that in some way?"

"No," Wilma said. "Cabot is in on it, too, equally. I'm sure of it, even if I can't prove it yet. Probably also the aides. Remember, even though he's seen Moray the most, Buck has said the same thing about all five of them. On the observation deck, he definitely was saying 'they' looked wrong. Then back there in the hall, he was starting to obey after the Admiral ordered him back to sick bay, he had turned away from Moray, and he got set off again when he turned far enough to notice the other four. Whatever he's seeing, he applies it to all of them."

"Green lights," Paulton repeated. "He might have explained that a little more clearly."

"We might have asked him to instead of just telling him they didn't exist," Wilma countered.

At that moment, the door into the adjoining room opened. Wilma was off like a flash, blasting into Buck's room fully ready for battle as she confronted - Hawk. She let out a long sigh of relief and relaxed. They needed more allies while working this out, and Hawk was a good one. They still didn't have enough yet to take a formal accusation to the Admiral and definitely not enough for earth authorities, but Hawk would accept the story even with so many questions left unanswered. Hawk, she thought guiltily, might even have believed Buck first if he had been here while the rest of them were still telling him he was hallucinating.

Hawk looked surprised at her tempestuous entrance. "Wilma? What's wrong?"

"Shhh." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Come here."

Hawk diverted to the bed, watching their friend sleep peacefully for a minute, then turned away and followed her into the lab.

"How is Buck?" he demanded as soon as the door was shut. "He seems better, at least now."

"He is doing better, no thanks to Moray." She and Goodfellow launched into a report of the last day, with Paulton throwing in an occasional comment. Hawk absorbed the tale quietly.

"He is out of danger now?" Hawk asked at the end.

"I think he is, yes, yes," Goodfellow said. "He even seems better in terms of his illness, as if fighting such a battle against the poison defeated that, too. Not that he's well, but his scans look better now than they have in days."

"Perhaps when he wakes up he will be able to try the OEI," Hawk said. "Meanwhile, what about the poison? Is it hard to get? Could that point us to a planet or society that could hold the key to this?"

"Excellent question, my boy. No, it's not that hard to acquire on many worlds and stations if you know the correct elements to mix together. The ingredients aren't difficult to find."

Hawk shifted to another area. "That one time that he saw something else besides the lights. Perhaps there are clues there."

"But that's only happened once," Wilma protested. "The lights have been consistent for several times and across all five people in the party. We were thinking that time might actually have been a hallucination since it's the exception."

"At the moment, I'd take nothing for granted," Hawk replied. "What did he say then?"

Paulton answered. "He seemed puzzled himself at first. He said, 'I thought I saw,' and then trailed off. Whatever he saw for a moment, he wasn't seeing it there in the hallway. It was just those green lights."

"He said 'it wasn't human' at one point after I arrived," Wilma put in.

"Wasn't human." Hawk turned to Goodfellow. "Is there any reason biologically that someone actually could see something at one moment but something else most of the time?"

"Well, there are shape changers and different species in the galaxy who can _change_ their appearance. That's something under their control, however. I've never heard of anything similar to this with an observer, and I can't explain at all why Buck might only get one brief look at it and would see it differently at all other times. He was agitated enough then that he would have mentioned it if it had ever happened before. That's precisely _why_ I was putting that one part down to a hallucination. It didn't fit. The lights, on the other hand, seem to be consistent, and as far as I know, he's never seen those with anyone else."

Hawk shook his head. "If you've decided to believe him, I would suggest believing him fully. We have as much proof for that time as all the rest. Buck said it happened."

"He certainly reacted to something," Paulton said. "He jumped and then launched straight off the bed and chased Moray down the hall. He was barely able to stand up, too. I don't know how he found the strength to do that."

"But when Moray was in the room right in front of him, he didn't react like that," Goodfellow protested. "He only kept talking about green lights. He actually was afraid something was wrong with his eyesight."

Wilma was thinking it through. "Hawk, are you suggesting that Moray is some kind of impostor? Another species just _appearing_ human?"

"It seems like a reasonable hypothesis from the events you've reported," Hawk said. "We are heading for earth, and Cabot and his party will report to the highest ranking personnel in the Defense Directorate. There are plenty of other species who would jump at the opportunity to get that close to the leaders."

"That would at least explain the inconsistency with the backgrounds," Wilma said. "Although it raises the question of what happened to the real Moray."

"I'd say probably all five of them," Hawk said. "Most likely, if this is the case, the real ambassador and Dr. Moray are dead, although we can hope they're just captives somewhere."

"But why would it be different for Buck just that once?" Goodfellow repeated.

"I do not know," Hawk answered. "But there is plenty we do not know."

"And Buck has seen all sorts of species by now," Wilma said. "Why wouldn't he say Moray was actually a Draconian or whatever?"

"The only answer I see to that one is that he didn't know what species he was dealing with," Hawk replied. "Who are our enemies that Buck has never seen an example of before?"

Wilma sighed. "Let me think. Either on vid com or news reports, like say the peace talks last week, or face to face, I think he's met most of the major ones by now."

"And what about the green lights?" Paulton said.

"Some sort of image screen?" Hawk suggested. "If an enemy has decided to replace the ambassador's party, perhaps they have a device to manipulate what we are seeing. Only of course, it would be calibrated to the inhabitants of the galaxy now. Buck is one of a kind, and his physiology is just slightly different. Maybe it isn't quite working in his case alone. No one would ever think of calibrating for a 500-year-old person, nor know how to even if they did consider it."

"Let's try to start making a list," Wilma said. The next hour was spent picking out enemies of earth whom she thought Buck had never met. She, of course, had the most complete knowledge of his history in this century.

Finally, Dr. Goodfellow suggested a break for a few minutes. Wilma fretted at the delay but knew he was right. They couldn't let themselves slip off peak performance. Food discs were broken out and munched in silence, washed down with water. Once they were finished, Wilma slipped back into the next room. She had still been vigilant with Buck, even while trying to solve the puzzle, but she kept taking periodic closer looks at him, too.

He was quiet, peaceful, all vital signs stable now. She stood there for a full minute, watching him. Just as she was about to turn away, his head turned slightly, and his eyelids flickered. Finally, he was waking up.


	5. Chapter 5

Buck's eyes opened, and Wilma felt a surge of joy. They were _his_ eyes again, a little tired and without all the usual sparkle to them, but they were fully alert and focused, no longer agitated or looking for threats. He spotted her at once, sized up the rest of the room, and then turned back to her.

"Hey," she said. "You're looking better." She reached out and rested a hand against his forehead. He still had a low fever, but it was a big improvement.

"I'm certainly feeling better," he agreed. "Mostly. I guess I made a fool of myself, didn't I?"

"No," she told him. "I think it's the rest of us who have. A lot has been happening in the last day, Buck. Before we get into explanations, I want you to know first that I do believe you now."

"I thought I remembered you saying that, but I wasn't sure. Wasn't sure if you actually said it and wasn't sure if you meant it even if you did say it or were just trying to make me feel better. I was having the wildest dreams there for a while."

"I really said it, and I really meant it. Dreams of what?" she asked him, curious. She had wondered that during those hours of watching him fight the poison. He certainly had looked like he was wrestling intense nightmares.

He shuddered. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do, Buck." She put a hand on his shoulder. "I was wondering, watching you."

"It was that obvious?"

"Yes, but there is a lot more that was happening that you don't know yet. I'll bring you up to date in a minute, but please, tell me what you were dreaming about."

He looked curious, but he did give her a quick answer. "Mostly variations on fire. Everything was burning. Lots of different dreams, but all of them were fire. Like one was my ship accident that sent me off on my long trip. But this time, instead of being frozen for 500 years, I was burning alive and couldn't get the hatch open to escape, and..." He stopped there.

Wilma was horrified. "And what?"

"Never mind." He shook himself slightly. "So what's been going on that made you start believing me? I didn't think anybody believed me. I even wondered a few times if _I_ believed me."

"Dr. Moray tried to kill you," she told him. "He injected you with a poison. We gave you the antidote once we realized, but you still had a several-hour fight against it, and the drug was obviously extremely painful. That was when you were dreaming about fire, I think. It came close to killing you."

"Moray actually did attack me? I thought he did, but...I know I haven't been at my best the last few days."

"Neither have we," she told him. "Buck, I'm so sorry. I should have listened to you. You even tried to tell me that you'd never hallucinated before, and you told Dr. Goodfellow that it only applied to the ambassador's party, that nothing else appeared distorted. Maybe if we'd realized something was going on sooner, we could have stopped Moray."

"So what _is_ going on? Why would Moray try to kill me? That's an extreme reaction to me making a pest of myself, especially given that nobody was taking me seriously."

She sighed. "We're still working that part out."

At that point, the others, having looked in through the window to the lab, came surging into the room.

"Welcome back, my dear boy." Dr. Goodfellow came up to the bed and seized Buck's hand. "We're so glad to still have you among the land of the living. And I'm sorry I haven't really been listening to you lately. There _are_ things going on with the ambassador's party, without a doubt. You certainly tried to tell us that, didn't you?"

Buck smiled at him and gave his hand a squeeze, then turned to Paulton. "Don't you have anything to say, Paulton?"

Her lips tightened, and Wilma laughed, partly in relief. He was still Buck, even if he wasn't entirely well yet. The poison and their doubts hadn't beaten down his spirit.

"You obviously were really seeing something," Paulton finally admitted. "And furthermore, if anybody kills you while you're a patient down here, it ought to be _me_. Not Dr. Moray."

Buck chuckled. His eyes went past them to Hawk. "You did come back," he said.

"Of course," Hawk replied.

"Buck, if you feel up to it, you can help us out," Wilma told him. "We still don't know exactly what's going on with the ambassador's party. The only reason any of us can think of for them to try to eliminate you is because you were drawing attention to them. So they're up to something. We figure whatever they are planning to do is going to happen at the Directorate after we get there, but we need to get a better case put together to take to the Admiral and the authorities before we go making accusations like this."

"You said Moray gave me a poison. You can't prove that?"

"I'm afraid not," Goodfellow said. "We can prove that _somebody_ gave you a poison, but unfortunately, we can't prove it was Moray. There was opportunity for someone else before that while you were sleeping."

Buck looked at him for a moment. "You did drug me," he said.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Buck, but you just weren't getting any rest, and we didn't realize anything else was going on. I never would have left you alone and sedated if I'd known there really was danger. You have my deepest apologies, my dear boy."

"Did you see Moray give you the shot?" Wilma asked.

Buck shook his head. "I _felt_ it. I was drugged, so it was like a delayed reaction, but it felt like fire running all down my arm and then spreading out. It took me a while to get my eyes to focus, but I did see him putting the syringe back inside his dress jacket. Only it wasn't Moray right then. That was the second time he changed for a few seconds into...that _thing_."

All of his audience came to attention. "What thing?" Wilma asked. Buck stalled. "We do believe you, Buck. What did you see?"

"It was some kind of creature. The same creature Moray had turned into once before, only when I chased him down the hall and caught up with him, he had changed back to just having the lights. But it was _exactly_ that same...thing...that was standing over me when I opened my eyes, and it was putting a syringe away. I thought it must have done something to me; the pain was so much worse all of a sudden. And so I attacked him. It's a little hazy right there, but I'll admit I was trying to kill him."

"He tried to kill you first," Wilma said. "Nobody can blame you for defending yourself. What did the creature look like, Buck?"

Buck hesitated again. "Our current hypothesis," Hawk put in, "is that the diplomatic party are actually impostors who have taken the place of the real Cabot and Moray and the aides and are trying to infiltrate the Directorate."

Buck looked fascinated. "Some non humanoid species, obviously. You think they've figured out a way to look like humans?"

"Yes, mostly. Since you're from the 20th century, whatever they are using to get their effect isn't calibrated to you, and we think that might be where the lights and the creature come in."

"The lights were bad enough," Buck said, "but that thing...I've never seen anything like that before. The closest description I could give you is that it almost looked a little like a much smaller relative of Godzilla."

He lost all of them there, and he realized it. "Of course. None of you have any idea who Godzilla was. Never mind. It looked like some sort of lizard. Only walking, like people. Not crawling."

Wilma was trying mentally to plug this into her list of enemy candidates and failing. "Let's get this clear. This was some species that you had never seen before?"

"Never seen it in my life until Dr. Moray turned into one. Twice."

"Exactly the same creature both times?" Dr. Goodfellow asked. Buck nodded. "And what about the lights? Green lights, you said."

"The whole party has that, even if it's just Moray so far who turns into a monster. The lights are like a green aura, a double image surrounding them. Makes them shimmer. But nothing is out of focus; it's just like they are outlined."

"All five of them, every time you've seen them?"

"Yes. Both on the monitor and directly."

"And nobody else on the ship besides them has had that visual effect with you?"

"No," Buck said decisively.

Goodfellow was looking intrigued. "That is not a hallucination. Too predictable, too much following a pattern, and of course, the creature being something you'd never seen before and being the exact same thing twice is a point in your favor. You can't hallucinate something you've never seen."

"You said you believed me now," Buck reminded him.

"I do, my dear boy. I do. I'm just thinking out loud, building a case. We have to have this put together enough to convince the authorities before we reach the Directorate." Dr. Goodfellow studied the monitors for a moment. "Buck, if you feel up to it, I'd like to run an OEI. We could see exactly what you saw that way, and maybe one of us would recognize something. The procedure is perfectly painless. It wouldn't even take long in this case, because we're after such recent, short episodes."

"Fine by me." Buck pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Your tests couldn't possibly be harder to go through than that poison was. By the way, how did you realize I'd been injected with it? At the point I passed out, I was definitely under the impression that you all thought I was crazy."

"That was Colonel Deering," Paulton said. "She insisted that we run a test for toxins. To be honest, Dr. Goodfellow and I both thought it was a waste of time, but it turned up positive. She saved your life. If you hadn't had that antidote when you did, I'm sure you would have died."

"It just seemed odd that you were developing new symptoms so soon after Moray left the room," Wilma told him. "It sounded like he had manipulated things to be alone with you, and then everybody agreed you'd really tried to kill him. That's out of character for you without him doing something significant to you first. So I took a wild guess."

Buck smiled at her. "Thanks. I guess you did help me get that hatch open after all."

The others looked confused, but Wilma had a sudden, chilling flash of insight. "Is _that_ what you were dreaming? That you were trapped in a fire, and the rest of us were around but wouldn't help you?"

He looked down. "The rest of you didn't seem to see me. Or hear me. It's not like you were deliberately ignoring me. You were just busy, and I couldn't ever get your attention."

Wilma sighed. "I'm so sorry, Buck. I can't blame you, either. Of course, we wouldn't be helping you in those dreams, not with how we've handled things so far in this mess."

"Well, let's forget about the last day and just figure out how to stop these people or creatures or whatever they are. Maybe the OEI is the key." Dr. Goodfellow had disconnected all instruments by now, and Buck slid off the bed to his feet. Wilma and Hawk each grabbed an arm. He felt much more steady on his feet than he had the last few times she had been helping him. He wasn't at full strength yet, but he was on the mend.

They retreated to the medical lab, and Buck sat down in a chair at the table. Dr. Goodfellow brought over the small machine that was one of his favorite scientific toys. He fussed for a few minutes getting it set up, but finally, he switched it on. "All right, Buck. I want you to think back to the very first time you saw the ambassador's party, the first time you thought something was wrong."

The monitor lit up, and there they were on the screen, all five of them, glowing green. Everybody but Buck stared. "My goodness," Goodfellow said. "I can't blame you for trying to go investigate that, my dear boy. And they've always looked like that?"

"Always," Buck said.

"Okay, we won't bother running through each occasion, then. Now, let's take the time that Moray injected you, which seems to be your closest look at that creature since you actually got your hands on him then. Think back to waking up with him standing over you with the needle."

That was harder, the monitor much slower coming into focus. Buck had been sedated then, after all. But finally, the image sharpened up to reveal the big lizard tucking the syringe into his jacket.

Wilma felt absolutely shocked. "That's a Saurian," she said. Dr. Goodfellow nodded emphatically.

Buck looked puzzled. "That's what Saurians look like?"

"Yes. I thought you had seen them during the broadcast of the negotiations last week. That's why we deleted Saurians from our list of possibilities. We were assuming that if you had recognized what Moray turned into that time in the hall, you would have named it."

"No, I missed the broadcast. I was on Cygnus, remember?"

"The negotiations started the day before you left the ship," Dr. Goodfellow said. "You didn't see anything of the broadcast that day, not in the lounge or such?"

Buck shook his head. "I never was in the lounge that day. Didn't feel like company. I just stayed in my quarters when I wasn't working on preparations for the survey on Cygnus."

 _That_ was odd enough that Wilma and Hawk both studied him more closely. Buck enjoyed people and usually spent a good bit of his off-duty time still around them. For him to isolate for a full day was out of character, and he hadn't at that point been getting sick yet. Wilma, casting her mind back, recalled that he had seemed a little bit quiet that day, but she had had a very hectic work day herself, and the impression had never made it clear to the surface. "Why?" she asked him.

He was still hooked up to the OEI, and the monitor image shifted again, leaving the confrontation with the Saurian, slowly coming into focus on an older woman. Buck looked at her for a moment, then pulled the device off his head. The screen went blank. "That was my mother's birthday," he told them. "I was just...remembering."

Wilma reached out and put a hand on his arm. Even Paulton looked sympathetic. Buck visibly gathered himself and returned to the urgent subject. "So that's a Saurian. Still not sure why I only saw the full thing twice, but if the Saurians have taken the place of the ambassador's party, we have to warn the Directorate. We can't just take them in there to headquarters to make a report."

Wilma nodded. "I think it's time to tell the Admiral what we know so far. That OEI should be enough proof for him."

"Yes," Hawk agreed. "Fortunately, we still have two days to come up with a strategy before we reach our destination."

Wilma walked to the vid com on the wall and called the bridge. "Admiral, this is Colonel Deering. I need to speak to you privately about something."

The Admiral turned to face the screen on the bridge, and Wilma froze. Just over his shoulder, clearly visible in the background and looking toward the screen themselves, were Cabot and Moray. Buck edged his chair sideways, making sure he was out of line of sight on this end, though he was well to one side of the screen to begin with.

The Admiral looked stressed. "I'm afraid it will have to wait, Colonel. We went off course an hour ago, some mechanical malfunction we're still trying to track down, and now, we're approaching the Delta Quadrant Defense Station. Thanks to Ambassador Cabot and his invaluable help, we aren't going to be fired upon, but we are about to be boarded in ten minutes by their security personnel. Whatever you wanted to tell me, we'll discuss it later." He snapped the screen off.

The five people in the lab looked at each other in cold realization. They didn't have two days to come up with a strategy to handle the Saurians. They had less than ten minutes.


	6. Chapter 6

Wilma turned to Buck. That wasn't quite fair, she knew. He still wasn't well and had already been through more today than anyone should have to overcome, but her response was automatic. He was so good, better than the rest of them, at coming up with new plans when situations started falling apart.

He was trying. She could almost hear him thinking furiously. "They're probably armed," he said.

"And none of our people would be, not on the bridge," Hawk put in. "That's supposed to be a secured area already. If we just went crashing up there and tried to shoot it out with them, at least some of them would likely have time to get off a shot, and that would be too risky with our friends there and not on guard."

Wilma nodded. "We've got to take them by surprise somehow, not give them time to reach for hidden weapons."

Buck turned the monitor on and set it to the bridge. Yes, all five of them were there, Cabot and his full party. Wilma watched Buck studying them. "Do all of them still have the lights?" she asked.

He nodded, and then his attention focused sharply. "That major on the screen does, too. They've got an inside man at Delta Quadrant, hopefully just one. None of them are the full Saurian, though. Why is it only Moray sometimes? What was different then?" He jumped. "Pain. That's it. Paulton had just spilled that soup the first time, and the second, Moray had injected the poison." He quickly turned to her. "Hit me, Wilma."

"What?" She started to protest.

Hawk didn't give her time. He stepped up alongside her and gave Buck a slap that sent the echo ringing through the room. Buck flinched, but his eyes never left the monitor. "There!" he said, and everyone followed his pointing finger, although none of them could see anything odd. "They are Saurians. All of them. Lizards. They're reptiles. They should hibernate if it gets cold enough. That would incapacitate them as well as hopefully reveal them to everyone."

Dr. Goodfellow nodded. "Yes, they do hibernate, my boy. But the thermostat for the bridge is clear on the other side. You'd never get across to it without one of them preventing you."

"Do they know I'm still alive?" Buck asked.

"Probably not," Wilma answered. "Moray came back here once about an hour after injecting you. You looked absolutely awful, and he could tell the poison was in its full course then. We haven't seen him since."

"You didn't accuse him, I take it?"

"No," Goodfellow said. "We didn't have proof. They don't know that we suspect anything yet."

"That's our weapon. Knowledge, plus surprise. What if I went crazy? Easy enough; everybody already thinks I am anyway. If I burst onto the bridge with a weapon acting like a lunatic, they'd be shocked to see me not dead, but if you all were right behind me trying to humor me and get the weapon away, they'd just stand there and watch and keep up the impression that I'm delirious. They probably wouldn't try for their weapons, and we would have time to get into position around them before they realized the game was up."

He surged to his feet and hurried across the lab. Entering his access code, he opened the emergency supply bin and removed a blaster. "Back me up," he told the rest of them. "But don't play it out too quickly. I've got to get clear across the bridge first to that themostat, and Hawk needs to be in position behind them before they suspect anything. Go!"

Adjusting the settings on the blaster, he turned and ran out of the lab. Wilma and Hawk grabbed weapons and followed, and Dr. Goodfellow and Paulton brought up the rear, Paulton reluctantly grabbing a small laser of her own.

Buck was turning the corner already when the others hit the hallway. At full speed, they all ran toward the bridge.


	7. Chapter 7

Admiral Asimov stood on the bridge, tensely watching the approach to Delta Quadrant, but on some level deep in his mind, he was wondering why it was that some weeks seemed to have everything going wrong at once. Nothing had really been running smoothly on the Searcher since Buck got sick a few days ago, and the current mission transporting the ambassador had been a nightmare of one problem after another, not just involving Buck, though that would have been enough, but also these unexplained technical issues. In addition, it had become apparent to him by now that Buck wasn't the only crew member on board who disliked the diplomats. Though everyone else had been completely professional, the Admiral, knowing them as well as he did, could tell from their reactions that especially the women simply didn't like their guests for some reason. He was a bit annoyed with his whole crew at the moment, himself included. They were better than they had performed on this mission, all of them, as was the ship itself.

Thank goodness that Cabot was a diplomat. Nothing had ruffled him, not Buck, not the crew's slight edge of tension, not even the current mess. Cabot's negotiations with the personnel at Delta Quadrant had been invaluable, and Asimov was just in the process of expressing his heartfelt thanks when the door to the bridge opened.

In the next moment, a well-known voice froze everyone. "Don't anybody move!"

"Buck!" Asimov turned, wondering how in the worlds Buck had gotten loose from sick bay again. After the scene in the hallway earlier, he had ordered Goodfellow to keep him in bed, with drugs if necessary. This was all they needed added to the current crisis. "What do you think you're doing?"

He jolted to a stop, staring, as he fully saw the other man. Buck had a blaster, the most powerful hand weapon available on the ship, and he was aiming it perfectly steadily at Cabot's party. "I mean it, Admiral," he said, and nobody on the bridge looking at him right then could doubt that. He spoke to Cabot, but he was still warily watching them all. "Back. Get back!" Cabot and his aides were staring in shock, but they did back up. Buck slid across in front of them and indicated a crew member on the far side of the bridge. "You. Cross over where I can see you." The man slipped out of the way as Buck turned, still covering the ambassador's party.

Asimov saw Devlin gather himself, and in the next second, Buck turned the weapon to aim straight at him. "Devlin, if you get out of that chair, you're a dead man." Devlin settled back into his seat, stunned. "I will atomize anyone who moves," Buck said. "Anyone."

Asimov believed him. Everybody on the bridge believed him. Buck at the moment couldn't have looked less like the well-liked, good-natured favorite of the crew. His eyes were dead serious, dangerous, and as he looked back at Cabot and his party, his expression held an intent and a level of animosity that Asimov had never seen from him before. The weapon was absolutely steady.

"Buck," the Admiral said, hoping somehow to reach him. "You're insane."

"That does seem to be the consensus, doesn't it?" Buck agreed.

The bridge doors opened, and in came Wilma Deering, closely followed by Dr. Goodfellow and Lieutenant Paulton. "Buck!" Wilma took a few steps toward him.

Unbelievably, he turned the weapon toward her. "Stop right there, Wilma," he said.

She stopped, but she kept on talking. "Buck, it's all right. Take it easy."

Asimov turned away just briefly from them to glare at Goodfellow. "What is he doing here?" he hissed softly.

"I'm sorry, Admiral, very sorry," the doctor said. "He's been so much worse today. We went into the lab for something just for a minute, thought he was unconscious, and he just bolted up and took off while we were out of the room. Maybe he's having a paradoxical reaction to the sedatives I gave him earlier; that does happen occasionally, you know, that a drug doesn't work entirely as we expect. Wilma did try to tell you a few minutes ago that he was loose on the ship again. We've been looking for him since he escaped."

Asimov sighed. "How did he get a weapon?"

"He probably used his access code on one of the supply bins," Paulton suggested.

True enough, Asimov realized. Buck, of course, was an officer and had authorized access to all sorts of secured locations.

Wilma meanwhile took another step forward. "It's okay, Buck."

Buck retreated another few feet, his back absolutely against the far wall of the bridge now. "No. None of you believe me; I've given up on that. I guess I'll just have to do everything myself."

"I do believe you, Buck." Asimov was impressed at how sincere she sounded. "I'm sorry I didn't earlier, but I do now. Let's talk about it." She took another two steps. Buck couldn't back up any farther, but the weapon for the first time did waver just a bit, losing some of its intense focus on her.

Cabot shifted slightly, and Buck snapped back to full attention, the blaster turning toward him. "Just let Colonel Deering handle things," Asimov urged. "She's got the best chance of anyone with him." Devlin, still glued to his seat, nodded.

"I believe you, Buck," Wilma repeated. Her advance was slow but steady now. He half turned the gun back toward her, then swung it again to the ambassador's party.

"Yes, we all believe you now, my boy," Dr. Goodfellow added. "And I'm looking forward to getting everything resolved."

"We all look forward to that," the Admiral agreed. Everyone on the bridge except for Wilma was still, not wanting to set Buck off any more than he already was. She was getting close to him. Three steps. Two steps. One step. She reached out and took the blaster away from him, and Asimov let out his breath in a sigh of relief.

In the next second, he nearly choked as Wilma turned, holding the blaster on the ambassador's party with every bit as much focus as Buck had. She looked angry herself now, not bothering to try to hide it, as she covered the diplomats. Buck turned away, opening an access panel.

"Colonel!" Asimov couldn't believe it.

"He's not delirious, Admiral," she said. "He's been seeing more truly than any of us all along."

Cabot jumped as Hawk, suddenly behind him, twisted his hand, wrenching away the small laser he had just pulled out. Meanwhile, Buck changed the settings on the thermostat, then turned back around and retrieved his blaster. Wilma took out her own weapon from a pocket. With the two of them in front, plus Hawk and, unbelievably, Paulton behind, the entire diplomatic party was covered.

"What in blazes is going on here?" Asimov demanded. "Are _all_ of you delirious?"

"Now, Admiral," Goodfellow said, "you know that the infection Buck has had isn't contagious to anybody else in this century."

Cabot shook his head. "This isn't illness, Admiral. This is pure mutiny. I've been more than patient with the shortfalls of how you run your ship, but this is too much." He shivered.

The temperature was indeed plumeting, and everyone on the bridge tucked themselves in a little more. "Buck," Asimov protested, "what did you do?"

"Just a pleasant climatic change," Buck said. "Not dangerous - not for people anyway. Just uncomfortable." He glared at Cabot and Moray. "So you think I'm crazy, do you? I've got a flash for you. I'm just crazy enough to know the difference between my friends and my enemies, and the Saurians are my enemies, even if they have found some way to appear human."

Asimov stared at Cabot and his coworkers. "What do you mean, Buck?"

"They're Saurians," Wilma confirmed. "They're all Saurians. I'm afraid to wonder where the real Ambassador Cabot is."

"They made one small mistake, Admiral," Buck told him. "They forgot that they had to fool someone from the 20th century, someone with a slightly different body chemistry, someone they hadn't calibrated their devices for."

Asimov tilted his head, absorbing the words. This was almost making sense. Of course, if the Saurians _did_ have such devices, they would be quite interested in making use of them, and Buck might well be the exception to their settings.

Cabot shook his head. "Admiral, this man is clearly insane." He wrapped his arms across his chest, trying to ward off the cold.

"I'm insane," Buck agreed. "So insane that it took me until a little while ago to work it out. Of course, it made it a lot harder that I'd never seen a Saurian. I didn't know _what_ you were at first. You're a pretty ugly species, you know it?"

"And you've _all_ seen this somehow now, Colonel?" Asimov asked Wilma.

"Not ourselves first hand, but we can confirm now that Buck saw it. Furthermore, Moray tried to kill him and came close to actually doing it."

Moray bristled. "That's ridiculous. The man is clearly ill; why are we even listening to his delusional tales?"

"Moray," Buck said, and his words were like a dagger. "The more I hear you talk, the madder I get at you. I've got a test in mind here, but it doesn't require all five of you alive to do it. If you want to stay alive, I'd advise you to shut up, because if I decide to use this blaster, I know exactly which one of you I'd take out first."

Cabot spoke up, his voice strangely slurring now. "The man is trying to freeze us to death." In the next moment, he crumpled to the floor.

"Who's next?" Buck asked. "You, Moray?"

Moray collapsed, followed by the three aides, and then Asimov stared. "Good Lord, what's happening?"

Buck exhaled softly, some of the tension finally going out of his shoulders. "Can you see it now?" he asked.

"Yes!"

"All right, Devlin, switch the vid com to transmit," Buck said. Devlin obeyed as Buck knelt next to the creature that had been Moray. He searched him briefly, then pulled off a metal band from his wrist and held it up toward the screen. "Here's how they did it. As you can see for yourselves, these people are all Saurians - just like the major at that console. If you check his wrist, you'll find a similar device."

On the screen, personnel closed in on the suddenly struggling major. Quickly, his disguise vanished, and in full form, he was led away.

Wilma moved forward, giving Buck a hand up from the floor, and Asimov shook himself into action. "Security to the bridge," he commanded. "We'll put them in the brig under double guard until we've docked."

Wilma and Hawk kept the Saurians covered while security was on the way up as Buck and Paulton put their weapons away, and Buck went over to the thermostat again. By the time security arrived, the temperature was noticeably warmer again, and the Saurians were starting to stir. Dr. Goodfellow and Wilma in turn meanwhile together brought the Admiral up to date on recent events.

Asimov watched the creatures be helped away, then turned back. Buck was still here, but he had sat down in the chair at the station that usually was Wilma's, and he looked somewhat tired now. Wilma, once freed of guard duty, came over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Buck," Asimov said, "if the Saurians had managed to infiltrate the Delta Quadrant station, they could have held the galaxy for ransom. I guess I don't have to tell you what an idiot I feel like."

Buck gave him his familiar grin. "That's all right, Admiral," he replied. "You can tell me."

"I have to agree, Buck," Goodfellow said. "You were splendid, absolutely splendid. But I think you'd better be getting back down to sick bay now. You've had a rather difficult time lately, thanks in part to us."

Buck shook his head. "I think I'll avoid sick bay from here on. Dangerous place. Things are safer for me out in the rest of the ship."

"No," Wilma said firmly. "You're going back down there right now."

Buck weighed her determination, then playfully dodged, looking over at Paulton. "On the other hand, Paulton here obviously is better at protection than she lets on. Maybe she even has a future in security if she ever gets tired of medicine. I'll never forget her standing there, laser in hand..." Paulton at that point gave a humph and turned around, exiting. Wilma and Dr. Goodfellow laughed, and Asimov began to feel like just maybe, eventually, things would get back to normal.

Buck stood up, and Asimov stretched out a hand to him. "Thank you, Buck," he said. "And I am sorry."

Buck gave him a smile as he shook his hand. "Don't worry about it, Admiral. I wondered if I was going crazy myself for a while there." He left the bridge along with Goodfellow, Wilma, and Hawk.

Asimov turned back to the screen, watching the Delta Quadrant Defense Station stretching out against space, secure. "So everything's all right now," Devlin said.

Asimov nodded. "Everything's all right now. Thanks to Buck."


End file.
